8 July 2010

I was waiting for a day when I can throw my arms in the air and cry out loud, “I’m finished with my master’s thesis! Oh boy, am I done with it! Oh holy blessed mother!”. It took what seemed like forever for this day to come.

But it is finally here, this day!

I will not sound original if I say it is never an easy deal to write a thesis. With my on-going apprenticeship in the bakery, it certainly was no feast for me. The pressure to meet my deadlines was high, 24/7. Mood swings were constant. Tiredness and fretting were my next-door neighbors. Binging on chocolate, peanut butter and strawberry jam on graham crackers was…well, you get my drift. Ideally, I would have almost all summer to finish my thesis, but because my supervisor was leaving her job earlier, I had to hurry up and get this job done within two months. Craaaaazy!

But in the murkiest moments when I could not squeeze a single thought out off my brains and would sit at my desk, staring at a yellow post-it duck-taped to the wall that said, “Write your thesis in bite-size chunks, everyday!”, sobbing and mindlessly chewing on something sweet or other (see above), even then I still saw a glimpse of hope that I could do it. The way forward was the only way, so I toiled, and toiled, and toiled again. And now that I did finish it (holy woman!), I feel accomplished. Proud, even. And happy because now I realize I can hang out here with you and not feel guilty about doing things other than working on my thesis.

What did I write about, you might ask. Being a student of English metaphor, I chose to write about how the use of metaphor varies from one genre of food-writing to another, in particular, I looked at recipes and first-person stories about food. Not to go too deep in this theoretical abracadabra, let me just say I found metaphor in both. A (not so) funny thing is that while I was busy with writing about all that, I somehow went astray in my kitchen. I became – gulp -- disinterested in cooking. I had canned chickpeas -- with fresh herbs or curry powder or tahini or just plain out of a tin can -- almost every day for the last couple of months. And although I knew that this apathy was temporary, it made me grumpy and touchy. It made me feel “unrooted”. It felt like lights were on with nobody home. But what added up to my daily frustrations the most was that I didn’t, or rather could not, get to write a single story to share with you for months. I missed you, Reader.

It's getting near breakfast time here, I'm thinking of making my "eggs as scrambled as an epileptic jellyfish" on "toast as burnt as an Irish sunbather". I may even make some "marmalade cake as healthy as a bullet through the heart" today because I've had "longings as persistent as a fungal infection" ever since trying it.

Dear OS, the defense procedure for most of the Dutch master's programmes is not required, which I don't half mind. This is not to say, though, that I din't get a taste of defense. I had to constuctively argue with my supervisor about my ideas quite a few times. The paper contains a mix of interpretative as well as "technical" (read: not so interesting) matters about metaphor in food-writing. Still interested to read "the document"? :)

Tiina, thank you, lady!

J, I made that orange marmElade cake yesterday for a picknick with my colleages from the bakery. I don't know, it must me a magic cake or something, but it was a hit again. This time I made it with toasted hazelnuts (instead of almonds). And oh man, was that a WAY better (yes, it is possible!). So delicate and flavourful, it made me eat half of it myself. Try it!

A few words

Hello, I am Anya Sokha (32). I am Russian, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands is my current home. Here I have been busying myself with various things, such as getting a master’s degree in English linguistics (finished!); being a bread baker (an apprentice before, and a dish-washer before that) in a French-style bakery; and figuring out where I should go next.

Godful Food has nothing to do with church and such. I made the word 'godful' up to show that food and writing are my religion. I was trying to be clever or something.